Increased dramatically so far in 2022.
According to the most recent Chainalysis research, hackers have mostly targeted the decentralised finance (DeFi) industry.
Digital assets worth $1.9 billion have been stolen up until July 2022. In comparison to the same time last year, this is an increase of more than 50%. This trend, according to Chainlaysis, doesn't appear to be changing anytime soon. Nearly $200 million was stolen from the cross-chain bridge protocol Nomad earlier this month. Similar to this, early in August, many Solana wallets reported losses totaling more than $5 million.
Chainlaysis further notes that the amount of money stolen from DeFi methods has increased dramatically. Furthermore, the vast majority of the money taken from DeFi methods is being hidden by North Korea's infamous Lazarus Group. According to the Chainalysis research, up to July 2022, organisations connected to North Korea had stolen more than $1 billion from DeFi protocols.
Declining cryptocurrency scam revenue
It's interesting to see that Chainalysis has seen a significant drop in 2022's overall revenue from scams. By the end of July 2022, overall scam revenue had decreased by 65% to $1.6 billion. This drop is primarily the result of falling cryptocurrency asset values.
In addition, fewer schemes offering passive gains have emerged since the market collapse, which means fewer potential victims. The report by Chainalysis adds, "The worst fraud of 2022 so far has garnered $273 million worth of cryptocurrency, just 24% of Finiko's $1.5 billion revenues until the end of July in 2021."
The collapse of the Hydra darknet earlier this year coincided with a significant reduction in darknet scams.
